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Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

dailygazette.com

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Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#31

Post by 6nf »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #30
jedimastert wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That a good question. I don't know how related it is, but I haven't seen anything about the legality or illegality of warrant canaries[1], so there might be something to it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

So the law says NOT to notify users about secret subpoenas. If you do, no matter how cute you think your method is, IMO, you broke the law. Oh, but just I took a file offline. Nope. The law can be unjust but that's another thing.

But I didnt even take a file offline. I just forgot to update it.

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#32

Post by onetimemanytime »

6nf wrote: post #31
onetimemanytime wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the law says NOT to notify users about secret subpoenas. If you do, no matter how cute you think your method is, IMO, you broke the law. Oh, but just I took a file offline. Nope. The law can be unjust but that's another thing.

But I didnt even take a file offline. I just forgot to update it.

So you've updated it 45 times and the time you "forgot" to update coincided with the time you got the secret order?

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#33

Post by onetimemanytime »

umvi wrote: post #2

I guess the police will learn to put the phone in a Faraday cage as soon as it's seized

Can they just take them offline? Or...at do they at some point need to be online for the evidence gathering?

I wonder how can they prove that she did it? Or it's your phone, you know the password and let's try to convict you? If it was programmed to be erased before the phone was taken /crime committed she is not guilty I guess.

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#34

Post by sudhirj »

onetimemanytime wrote: post #32
6nf wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I didnt even take a file offline. I just forgot to update it.

So you've updated it 45 times and the time you "forgot" to update coincided with the time you got the secret order?

Isn’t there a free speech aspect to canaries? Can the court force someone to publicly tell an explicit lie?

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#35

Post by onetimemanytime »

piotrkaminski wrote: post #13

I'm kinda curious how the law would treat a dead man's switch that automatically wipes the phone if you haven't unlocked it for N hours (say, 24 or 48). (Assuming it was set up well before any event that prompted the phone's seizure, of course.) Could they somehow charge you for not warning the police about the auto-wipe when they took your phone? Does the answer change if you were officially under arrest and had a r…

>>Could they somehow charge you for not warning the police about the auto-wipe when they took your phone?

They might charge but "I was arrested, my mind was going nuts...was setup a long time ago, never hit my mind" etc etc. You need to be doing it on purpose and knowingly.

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#36

Post by mrsteveman1 »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #10
reustle wrote: post #7

What if I use the gmail/slack/whatsapp website instead of the app, and remotely log the phone out of google/etc if my device is seized. That way the data was only stored in RAM, and they shouldn't be able to access it once they get into the phone. Does that count as destruction of evidence?

If you deliberately do anything which will cause evidence to be placed beyond the reach of law enforcement then you are likely to be hit with charges. You can quibble over technical details, but at some point a judge will be asked if it fits the charge, and make a layman decision, not a programmer's one.

Then again, if a browser cookie is the only thing providing access to "evidence" on a particular machine, then it wasn't actually on that machine to begin with.

That's far from a mere technical detail, as it also means the person lacked any meaningful physical control of, or proximity to, the evidence.

I recall there are some cases that centered on whether someone was aware of the existence of a browser cache and knew how to clear it. In that case the "evidence" really is on the local machine because that's what the cache is.

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#37

Post by martin1975 »

sudhirj wrote: post #34
onetimemanytime wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you've updated it 45 times and the time you "forgot" to update coincided with the time you got the secret order?

Isn’t there a free speech aspect to canaries? Can the court force someone to publicly tell an explicit lie?

only if you're covert working for 3 lettered agencies can you lie and get away with it. Though they'd get you out some other way to avoid blowing your cover.

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#38

Post by toomanybeersies »

vuln wrote: post #3
umvi wrote: post #2

I guess the police will learn to put the phone in a Faraday cage as soon as it's seized

Sell 'mobile' Faraday cages one for every squad car... Profit?

Just use a chip packet instead?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/27/australian-sacke...

Re: Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone

#39

Post by manicdee »

null0pointer wrote: post #28
jrochkind1 wrote: post #17

> Monday Update: Suspect in remote phone-wiping case denies wrongdoing, Nov. 12, 2018 > [ https://dailygazette.com/article/2018/11/12/suspect-in-remot... ] > "Our position is that my client didn't access anything to remotely delete anything," Smalls said. "My client wouldn't have any knowledge how to do that." That seems like something pretty easily disproven with a subpoena to Apple for records of whether a remote w…

Yes, there's an option to have your phone auto-wipe after 10 failed unlock attempts. However, I'm not aware of any way to have it auto-wipe by itself after n-days. Getting a new phone and signing into your Apple ID has no effect on the data stored on your old phone.

Removing a phone that was previously associated with your Apple ID will remotely erase the device. You will get an email confirming the erasure the next time the device is turned on.
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